The present invention relates to a vehicle marking method, device, a vehicle and an adapted road as based on the principle of the method.
Vehicle markers are known in the form of e.g. reflectors or lights for indicating the position and/or location of a vehicle to other participants in traffic. For the driver of the vehicle itself, indication of the location of a vehicle part is however, only rarely applied. Cost and complexity of such known devices are of influence on this circumstance, such as radar, laser or camera based parking support devices. Most commonly, the driver of a vehicle is to rely on experience or estimated guess at determining the location of e.g. the rear part of his vehicle.
Especially at truck lorries or other relatively large vehicles, it is even for considerably experienced drivers thereof, complicated to estimate the location of the rear end of their vehicle. Side mirrors specifically directed to the rear end of the vehicle are helpful, but also put a strain on the driver because of a mentally required task to translate a very often reduced picture size into reality sizes. There may also be a requirement to simultaneously watch, i.e. switch towards a second mirror directed to rear traffic, i.e. to the traffic lane aside from the traffic lane the vehicle is in. For this reason one may notice a widely spread practice of truck drivers supporting one another at completing an overtake action by signalling their head lights. The overtaking vehicle, i.e. the passing vehicle may than safely switch to the lane of the passed vehicle. Though helpful at safely completing overtake actions, the gentlemen-like practice of signalling lights is not fully adequate. It only occurs at overtake actions and even then, it is only practiced by truck drivers for other truck drivers. Also, the signalling is often performed only once, so that when the attention of the driver is required at the traffic ahead, he may miss the signal, and still not know for sure whether he has passed the other vehicle.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,430,625 the problem of safely changing lanes is mentioned. The document suggests to solve this problem by an “illuminating system for lighting the area immediately adjacent the rear wheel” of the vehicle or semi-trailer”, since “a driver needs to be able to see any objects which are adjacent the side of the trailer”. It is further argued that “particularly at night it is impossible to view the area around the rear wheel”, while it is noticed that the position of the rear wheels is important “since the length of the turning radius is dependent upon the position of the rear trailer wheel”. As a solution “the area of the immediately adjacent the rear wheel” is provided with an illumination system. However, with a system according to this prior art, it may during daylight still happen that the driver is unable or insufficiently able to estimate the rear side of the vehicle. Also, it may happen that the driver, especially when different trailers are being used, and at high travelling speeds, insufficiently realises what length of vehicle still passes by behind the rear wheels.